Chicagoland’s oldest marching band festival turns 50

The Chicagoland Marching Band Festival at Wheeling High School will conduct its 50th annual show this Saturday, beginning at 3 PM and ending with a performance by the marching band from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and awards at 9:30.

Wheeling High School, 2011 (Voxitatis)

Schedule of bands expected to perform

United Township (East Moline), 3 PM

McHenry, 3:45

Sandwich, 4:00

Bloom Township (Chicago Heights), 4:15

Rich Central (Olympia Fields), 4:45

Dwight D Eisenhower (Blue Island), 5:00

Glenbrook North (Northbrook), 5:15

William Howard Taft (Chicago), 5:45

Waukegan, 6:00

Fremd (Palatine), 6:15

Downers Grove South, 6:45

Rolling Meadows, 7:00

Elk Grove (Elk Grove Village), 7:15

Huntley, 8:00

Glenbrook South (Glenview), 8:15

Warren Township (Gurnee), 8:30

Prospect (Mt Prospect), 8:45

Wheeling, 9:00

University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, 9:15

Voxitatis will update this page as more information becomes available. Wheeling High School is located at 900 S Elmhurst Road, Wheeling, Illinois. The Wheeling High School marching band is directed by Mike Malek.

The weather is expected to bring a few clouds in the sky and unseasonably warm temperatures, with a high at the step-off of about 93°F, decreasing by a few degrees every hour after that.

It was so hot, breaking a few heat records this late in the year, that the Naperville Central Marching Classic at Benedictine University in west-subruban Lisle was cut short due to heat, leaving out the last four of 18 bands, including Naperville Central, the hosting school.

How remarkable is this heat wave? In 70% of years dating back to 1871 Chicago never saw 3+ consecutive days >=94F, let alone at end of Sept!

Amazed that the middle of the country could be experiencing this kind of heat wave so late in the year, I looked up at the sun with binoculars and didn’t see any sunspots. Sunspots are where the temperature on the surface of the sun is a few thousand degrees cooler than areas where sunspots aren’t as prominent, and the absence of sunspots doesn’t have nearly the same effect on the Earth’s surface temperature as other factors do, such as the angle at which the sun’s light hits any given spot on Earth.

But, since I wasn’t in Illinois to experience the heat at the CMBF personally, it was really the best I could do.

When I looked at the sun with a slightly bigger telescope, I could see a single sunspot. A week and a half ago, I could see sunspots with filaments connecting them, and this is by no means a high-resolution solar telescope (it’s a 6-inch reflector—and slightly out of focus from my ad hoc observatory on the deck at my house). But, the single sunspot is the lowest level of sunspot activity I’ve seen on the sun since the end of July.